15 Nov Chinese, Foreign Money Pour Into Facial Recognition Tech Startups
China’s plans to build a ubiquitous surveillance network has driven local and foreign investors to heavily fund facial recognition software companies who are looking to fulfill the plan’s tech requirements.
Firms such as SenseTime Group, Face++ and DeepGlint are jostling to capture a big piece of the multi-billion dollar global public and private market for technology that can help authorities instantly identify individuals. However, the companies do not seem to be too concerned about privacy issues their technology might bring.
Echoing the sentiments of other companies within their industry, Xie Yinan, Face++’s marketing and PR director said that they were just technology providers and are neutral. He further justified people had better privacy in the past only because the Internet and mobile were not yet present. Nowadays, people will just have to learn how to live and advance with the privacy tradeoffs that come with such technology.
Source: Reuters
